HyperNormalisation (2016)

1. The Vanishing American Family by Scuba Z

2. We live in a strange time.

3. Extraordinary events keep happening

4. that undermine the stability of our world.

5. Suicide bombs, waves of refugees,

6. Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin,

7. even Brexit.

8. Yet those in control seem unable to deal with them,

9. and no-one has any vision

10. of a different or a better kind of future.

11. Something I Can Never Have by Nine Inch Nails

12. This film will tell the story of how we got to this strange place.

13. It is about how, over the past 40 years,

14. politicians, financiers and technological utopians,

15. rather than face up to the real complexities of the world,

16. retreated.

17. Instead, they constructed a simpler version of the world

18. in order to hang on to power.

19. And as this fake world grew, all of us went along with it,

20. because the simplicity was reassuring.

21. Even those who thought they were attacking the system -

22. the radicals, the artists, the musicians,

23. and our whole counterculture -

24. actually became part of the trickery,

25. because they, too, had retreated into the make-believe world,

26. which is why their opposition has no effect

27. and nothing ever changes.

28. The Vanishing American Family by Scuba Z

29. But this retreat into a dream world

30. allowed dark and destructive forces to fester and grow outside.

31. Forces that are now returning to pierce the fragile surface

32. of our carefully constructed fake world.

33. The story begins in two cities at the same moment in 1975.

34. One is New York.

35. The other is Damascus.

36. It was a moment when two ideas about how it might be possible

37. to run the world without politics first took hold.

38. In 1975, New York City was on the verge of collapse.

39. For 30 years, the politicians who ran the city

40. had borrowed more and more money from the banks

41. to pay for its growing services and welfare.

42. But in the early '70s, the middle classes fled from the city

43. and the taxes they paid disappeared with them.

44. So, the banks lent the city even more.

45. But then, they began to get worried about the size of the growing debt

46. and whether the city would ever be able to pay it back.

47. And then one day in 1975,

48. the banks just stopped.

49. The city held its regular meeting to issue bonds

50. in return for the loans, overseen by the city's financial controller.

51. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.

52. Today, the city of New York is offering for competitive bidding

53. the sale of 260 million tax anticipation notes,

54. of which 100 million will mature on June 3rd, 1975.

55. The banks were supposed to turn up at 11am,

56. but it soon became clear that none of them were going to appear.

57. The meeting was rescheduled for 2pm

58. and the banks promised they would turn up.

59. The announcement on behalf of the controller is that the offer,

60. which we had expected to receive

61. and announce at two o'clock this afternoon,

62. is now expected at four o'clock.

63. Paul, does this mean that, so far, nobody wants those bonds?

64. We will be making a further announcement at four o'clock

65. and anything further that I could say now I think would not advance

66. the interest of the sale, which is now in progress.

67. Does this mean that you have not been able to sell them so far today?

68. We will have a further announcement at four o'clock.

69. What happened that day in New York marked a radical shift in power.

70. The banks insisted that in order to protect their loans

71. they should be allowed to take control of the city.

72. The city appealed to the President,

73. but he refused to help,

74. so a new committee was set up to manage the city's finances.

75. Out of nine members, eight of them were bankers.

76. It was the start of an extraordinary experiment

77. where the financial institutions took power away from the politicians

78. and started to run society themselves.

79. The city had no other option.

80. The bankers enforced what was called "austerity" on the city,

81. insisting that thousands of teachers, policemen

82. and firemen were sacked.

83. This was a new kind of politics.

84. The old politicians believed that crises were solved

85. through negotiation and deals.

86. The bankers had a completely different view.

87. They were just the representatives

88. of something that couldn't be negotiated with -

89. the logic of the market.

90. To them, there was no alternative to this system.

91. It should run society.

92. Just by shifting paper around,

93. these slobs can make $60 million, $65 million in a single transaction.

94. That would take care of all of the lay-offs in the city,

95. so it's reckless, it's cruel and it's a disgrace.

96. There would be a fair number of bankers, of course,

97. who'd say it's the unions who have been too greedy.

98. What would your reaction be to that? I guess they're right in a way.

99. If you can make $60 million on a single transaction,

100. and a worker makes $8,000, $9,000 a year, I suppose they're correct,

101. and as they go back to their little estates in Greenwich, Connecticut,

102. I want to wish them well, the slobs.

103. But the extraordinary thing was no-one opposed the bankers.

104. The radicals and the left-wingers who, ten years before,

105. had dreamt of changing America through revolution did nothing.

106. They had retreated

107. and were living in the abandoned buildings in Manhattan.

108. The singer Patti Smith later described the mood of disillusion

109. that had come over them.

110. "I could not identify

111. "with the political movements any longer," she said.

112. "All the manic activity in the streets.

113. "In trying to join them, I felt overwhelmed

114. "by yet another form of bureaucracy."

115. What she was describing was the rise of a new, powerful individualism

116. that could not fit with the idea of collective political action.

117. Instead, Patti Smith and many others

118. became a new kind of individual radical,

119. who watched the decaying city with a cool detachment.

120. They didn't try and change it.

121. They just experienced it.

122. Look at that. Isn't that cool?

123. I love that, where, like, kids write all over the walls.

124. That, to me, is neater than any art sometimes.

125. "Jose and Maria forever."

126. Oh, there's a lot of things, like, when you pass by big movie houses,

127. maybe we'll find one, but they have little movie screens,

128. where you can see clips of, like, Z, or something like that.

129. People watch it over and over.

130. I've seen people, I've checked them out. All day!

131. I've gone back and forth and they're still there

132. watching the credits of a movie, cos they don't have enough dough,

133. but it's some entertainment, you know?

134. Instead, radicals across America turned to art and music

135. as a means of expressing their criticism of society.

136. They believed that instead of trying to change the world outside

137. the new radicalism should try and change

138. what was inside people's heads,

139. and the way to do this was through self-expression,

140. not collective action.

141. U

142. V

143. W

144. X

145. Y

146. Z

147. But some of the Left saw that something else was really going on -

148. that by detaching themselves and retreating into an ironic coolness,

149. a whole generation were beginning to lose touch

150. with the reality of power.

151. Shut up.

152. Shut up!

153. One of them wrote of that time,

154. "It was the mood of the era

155. "and the revolution was deferred indefinitely.

156. "And while we were dozing, the money crept in."

157. What's your date of birth, Larry?

158. But one of the people who did understand how to use this new power

159. was Donald Trump.

160. Trump realised that there was now no future

161. in building housing for ordinary people,

162. because all the government grants had gone.

163. But he saw there were other ways

164. to get vast amounts of money out of the state.

165. Trump started to buy up derelict buildings in New York

166. and he announced that he was going to transform them

167. into luxury hotels and apartments.

168. But in return, he negotiated the biggest tax break

169. in New York's history, worth $160 million.

170. The city had to agree because they were desperate,

171. and the banks, seeing a new opportunity,

172. also started to lend him money.

173. And Donald Trump began to transform New York into a city for the rich,

174. while he paid practically nothing.

175. At the very same time, in 1975,

176. there was a confrontation between two powerful men in Damascus,

177. the capital of Syria.

178. One was Henry Kissinger, the US Secretary of State.

179. The other was the President of Syria, Hafez al-Assad.

180. The battle between the two men

181. was going to have profound consequences for the world.

182. And like in New York, it was going to be a struggle

183. between the old idea of using politics to change the world

184. and a new idea that you could run the world as a stable system.

185. President Assad dominated Syria.

186. The country was full of giant images and statues that glorified him.

187. He was brutal and ruthless,

188. killing or imprisoning anyone he suspected of being a threat.

189. But Assad believed that the violence was for a purpose.

190. He wanted to find a way of uniting the Arab countries

191. and using that power to stand up to the West.

192. Four,

193. three,

194. two,

195. one.

196. Kissinger was also tough and ruthless.

197. He had started in the 1950s

198. as an expert in the theory of nuclear strategy.

199. What was called "the delicate balance of terror."

200. It was the system that ran the Cold War.

201. Both sides believed that if they attacked,

202. the other side would immediately launch their missiles

203. and everyone would be annihilated.

204. Kissinger had been one of the models for the character

205. of Dr Strangelove in Stanley Kubrick's film.

206. Mr President, I would not rule out the chance

207. to preserve a nucleus of human specimens.

208. It would be quite easy.

209. At the bottom of some of our deeper mineshafts.

210. Henry was not a warm, friendly, modest, jovial sort of person.

211. He was thought of as one of the more...

212. .. anxious, temperamental, self-conscious,

213. ambitious, inconsiderate people at Harvard.

214. Kissinger saw himself as a hard realist.

215. He had no time for the emotional turmoil of political ideologies.

216. He believed that history had always really been a struggle for power

217. between groups and nations.

218. But what Kissinger took from the Cold War

219. was a way of seeing the world as an interconnected system,

220. and his aim was to keep that system in balance

221. and prevent it from falling into chaos.

222. I believe that with all the dislocations we now experience,

223. there also exists an extraordinary opportunity

224. to form, for the first time in history, a truly global society

225. carried up by the principle of interdependence,

226. and if we act wisely, and with vision,

227. I think we can look back to all this turmoil

228. as the birth pangs of a more creative and better system.

229. If we miss the opportunity, I think there's going to be chaos.

230. The flight has been delayed, we understand now.

231. Kissinger will be arriving here about an hour and a half from now,

232. so we'll just have the press informed

233. and then we'll stay in contact with you...

234. And it was this idea that Kissinger set out to impose

235. on the chaotic politics of the Middle East.

236. But to manage it,

237. he knew that he was going to have to deal with President Assad of Syria.

238. President Assad was convinced that there would only ever be

239. a real and lasting peace between the Arabs and Israel

240. if the Palestinian refugees were allowed to return to their homeland.

241. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians

242. were living in exile in Syria,

243. as well as in the Lebanon and Jordan.

244. Have you found that the Palestinians here want to integrate

245. with the Syrians at all?

246. Oh, no. No, never.

247. They don't want...

248. Not here or neither in Lebanon or in Jordan, never.

249. No, because they want to stay as a whole, as... Palestinian.

250. As... They call themselves, "Those Who Go Back" -

251. "al-a'iduun", you say in Arabic.

252. Assad also believed that such a peace

253. would strengthen the Arab world.

254. But Kissinger thought that strengthening the Arabs

255. would destabilise his balance of power.

256. So, he set out to do the very opposite -

257. to fracture the power of the Arab countries,

258. by dividing them and breaking their alliances,

259. so they would keep each other in check.

260. Kissinger now played a double game.

261. Or as he termed it, "constructive ambiguity".

262. In a series of meetings, he persuaded Egypt

263. to sign a separate agreement with Israel.

264. But at the same time, he led Assad to believe

265. that he was working for a wider peace agreement,

266. one that WOULD include the Palestinians.

267. In reality, the Palestinians were ignored.

268. They were irrelevant to the structural balance

269. of the global system.

270. The hallmark of Kissinger's thinking about international politics

271. is its structural design.

272. Everything is always connected in his mind to everything else.

273. But his first thoughts are on that level,

274. on this structural global balance of power level.

275. And as he addresses questions of human dignity,

276. human survival, human freedom...

277. ..I think they tend to come into his mind

278. as an adjunct of the play of nations at the power game.

279. When Assad found out the truth, it was too late.

280. In a series of confrontations with Kissinger in Damascus,

281. Assad raged about this treachery.

282. He told Kissinger that what he had done

283. would release demons hidden under the surface of the Arab world.

284. Kissinger described their meetings.

285. "Assad's controlled fury," he wrote,

286. "was all the more impressive for its eerily cold,

287. "seemingly unemotional, demeanour."

288. Assad now retreated.

289. He started to build a giant palace that loomed over Damascus...

290. .. and his belief that it would be possible to transform the Arab world

291. began to fade.

292. A British journalist, who knew Assad, wrote...

293. "Assad's optimism has gone.

294. "A trust in the future has gone.

295. "What has emerged instead is a brutal, vengeful Assad,

296. "who believes in nothing except revenge."

297. The original dream of the Soviet Union

298. had been to create a glorious new world.

299. A world where not only the society,

300. but the people themselves would be transformed.

301. They would become new and better kinds of human beings.

302. But by the 1980s, it was clear that the dream had failed.

303. The Soviet Union became instead

304. a society where no-one believed in anything

305. or had any vision of the future.

306. Those who ran the Soviet Union had believed that they could plan

307. and manage a new kind of socialist society.

308. But they had discovered that it was impossible

309. to control and predict everything

310. and the plan had run out of control.

311. But rather than reveal this, the technocrats began to pretend

312. that everything was still going according to plan.

313. And what emerged instead was a fake version of the society.

314. The Soviet Union became a society where everyone knew

315. that what their leaders said was not real

316. because they could see with their own eyes

317. that the economy was falling apart.

318. But everybody had to play along and pretend that it WAS real

319. because no-one could imagine any alternative.

320. One Soviet writer called it "hypernormalisation".

321. You were so much a part of the system

322. that it was impossible to see beyond it.

323. The fakeness was hypernormal.

324. In this stagnant world, two brothers -

325. called Arkady and Boris Strugatsky -

326. became the inspiration of a growing new dissident movement.

327. They weren't politicians, they were science fiction writers,

328. and in their stories,

329. they expressed the strange mood that was rising up

330. as the Soviet Empire collapsed.

331. Their most famous book was called Roadside Picnic.

332. It is set in a world that seems like the present,

333. except there is a zone that has been created by an alien force.

334. People, known as "stalkers", go into the zone.

335. They find that nothing is what it seems,

336. that reality changes minute by minute.

337. Shadows go the wrong way.

338. There are hidden forces that twist your body

339. and change the way you think and feel.

340. The picture the Strugatskys gave

341. was of a world where nothing was fixed.

342. Where reality - both what you saw and what you believed -

343. had become shifting and unstable.

344. And in 1979, the film director Andrei Tarkovsky

345. made a film that was based on Roadside Picnic.

346. He called it Stalker.

347. I, Ronald Reagan, do solemnly swear...

348. .. That I will faithfully execute

349. the office of president of the United States.

350. .. that I will faithfully execute

351. the office of president of the United States.

352. The new president of America had a new vision of the world.

353. It wasn't the harsh realism of Henry Kissinger any longer,

354. it was different -

355. it was a simple, moral crusade,

356. where America had a special destiny to fight evil

357. and to make the world a better place.

358. The places and the periods in which man has known freedom

359. are few and far between -

360. just scattered moments on the span of time.

361. And most of those moments have been ours.

362. The American people have a genius for great and unselfish deeds.

363. Into the hands of America,

364. God has placed the destiny of an afflicted mankind.

365. God bless America.

366. But this crusade was going to lead Reagan

367. to come face-to-face with Henry Kissinger's legacy...

368. .. and, above all, the vengeful fury of President Assad of Syria.

369. Israel was now determined

370. to finally destroy the power of the Palestinians.

371. And, in 1982, they sent a massive army

372. to encircle the Palestinian camps in the Lebanon.

373. Do you know... Do you know how strong the Israelis are?

374. Do you know how many tanks they have outside Beirut?

375. Do you know how strong they are?

376. That means "We are not ready to surrender".

377. Young, young, young!

378. Keep going!

379. Dashed into this building here because the PLO guys with us

380. expect that, sooner or later, there will be a huge explosion.

381. There've been several of these in the last few minutes.

382. As you can see,

383. there's enormous damage in all the buildings round here.

384. Quick, quick!

385. Two months later, thousands of Palestinian refugees

386. were massacred in the camps.

387. It horrified the world.

388. But what was even more shocking

389. was that Israel had allowed it to happen.

390. Its troops had stood by and watched

391. as a Christian Lebanese faction murdered the Palestinians.

392. This was the first of the massacres we discovered yesterday.

393. Now, 24 hours later, the stench here is appalling.

394. But the effects on the Israelis

395. of what their Christian allies did here

396. and in dozens of other places around this camp

397. are going to be immense.

398. There's always been a risk of such massacres if Christian militiamen

399. were allowed to come into Palestinian camps,

400. and the Israelis seem to have done nothing

401. to prevent them coming into this one.

402. In the face of the horror and the growing chaos,

403. President Reagan was forced to act.

404. He announced that American marines would come to Beirut

405. to lead a peacekeeping force.

406. Reagan insisted that the troops were neutral.

407. But President Assad was convinced that there was another reality.

408. He saw the troops as part of the growing conspiracy

409. between America and Israel to divide the Middle East into factions

410. and destroy the power of the Arabs.

411. Assad decided to get the Americans out of the Middle East.

412. And to do this, he made an alliance

413. with the new revolutionary force of Ayatollah Khomeini's Iran.

414. And what Khomeini could bring to Assad

415. was an extraordinary new weapon that he had just created.

416. It was called it "the poor man's atomic bomb".

417. Ayatollah Khomeini had come to power two years before

418. as the leader of the Iranian revolution.

419. But his hold on power was precarious,

420. and Khomeini had developed a new idea of how to fight his enemies

421. and defend the revolution.

422. Khomeini told his followers that they could destroy themselves

423. in order to save the revolution providing that, in the process,

424. they killed as many enemies around them as possible.

425. This was completely new,

426. because the Koran specifically prohibited suicide.

427. In the past, you became a martyr on the battlefield

428. because God chose the time and place of your death.

429. But Khomeini changed this.

430. He did it by going back to one of the central rituals of Shia Islam.

431. Every year, Shi'ites march in a procession

432. mourning the sacrifice of their founder, Husayn.

433. As they do, they whip themselves,

434. symbolically re-enacting Husayn's suffering.

435. Khomeini said that the ultimate act of penitence

436. was not just to whip yourself,

437. but to kill yourself...

438. .. providing it was for the greater good of the revolution.

439. In the name of God, the compassionate, the merciful,

440. good afternoon.

441. "An Iraqi Soviet-made MiG-23 was shot down

442. "by the air-force jet fighters of the Islamic Republic

443. "over the north-western Iranian border region of Marivan

444. "at 10.08 hours local time, Saturday,"

445. said the Joint Staff Commands communique numbered 1710.

446. Khomeini had mobilised this force

447. when the country was attacked by Iraq.

448. Iran faced almost certain defeat

449. because Iraq had far superior weapons,

450. many of them supplied by America.

451. So, the revolutionaries took tens of thousands of young boys

452. out of schools, put them on buses and sent them to the front line.

453. Their job was to walk through the enemies' minefields,

454. deliberately blowing themselves up in order to open gaps

455. that would allow the Iranian army to pass through unharmed.

456. It was organised suicide on a vast scale.

457. This human sacrifice was commemorated

458. in giant cemeteries across the country.

459. Fountains flowing with blood red-water

460. glorified this new kind of martyrdom.

461. And it was this new idea -

462. of an unstoppable human weapon -

463. that President Assad took from Khomeini,

464. and brought to the West for the first time.

465. But, as it travelled,

466. it would mutate into something even more deadly.

467. Instead of just killing yourself,

468. you would take explosives with you into the heart of the enemy

469. and then blow yourself up,

470. taking dozens or even hundreds along with you.

471. It would become known as "suicide bombing".

472. In October 1983, two suicide bombers

473. drove trucks into the US marine barracks in Beirut.

474. It was seeing something move that took me out of my trance.

475. And then I recognised, "Oh, yes, marines were in that building.

476. "A lot of marines were in that building."

477. And that's when I ran down and...

478. And it was a black... black marine.

479. He looked white.

480. The dust had just covered him.

481. The massive explosions killed 241 Americans.

482. The bombers were members of a new militant group

483. that no-one had heard of.

484. They called themselves Hezbollah

485. and, although many of them were Iranian,

486. they were very much under the control of Syria

487. and the Syrian intelligence agencies.

488. President Assad was using them as his proxies to attack America.

489. Whoever carried out yesterday's bombings - Shia Muslim fanatics,

490. devotees of the Ayatollah Khomeini, or whatever -

491. it is Syria who profits politically.

492. The most significant fact is that the dissidents live and work

493. with Syrian protection.

494. So, it is to Syria rather than to the dissident group's guiding light,

495. Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran, that we must look for an explanation

496. of the group's activities. Destabilisation is Syria's

497. Middle-Eastern way of reminding the world that Syria

498. must not be left out of plans for the future of the area.

499. There are no words that can express our sorrow and grief

500. for the loss of those splendid young men

501. and the injury to so many others.

502. These deeds make so evident the bestial nature

503. of those who would assume power

504. if they could have their way and drive us out of that area.

505. But despite his words, within four months,

506. President Reagan withdrew all the American troops from the Lebanon.

507. The Secretary of State George Shultz explained.

508. "We became paralysed by the complexity that we faced," he said.

509. So, the Americans turned and left.

510. For President Assad, it was an extraordinary achievement.

511. He was the only Arab leader to have defeated the Americans

512. and forced them to leave the Middle East.

513. He had done it by using the new force of suicide bombing.

514. A force that, once unleashed,

515. was going to spread with unstoppable power.

516. But at this point, both Assad and the Iranians

517. thought that they could control it.

518. And what gave it this extraordinary power

519. was that it held out the dream

520. of transcending the corruptions of the world

521. and entering a new and better realm.

522. One should defend the realm of Islam and Muslims

523. against heretics and invaders.

524. And to fulfil this duty, one should even sacrifice one's life.

525. We believe that martyrs can overlook our deeds from the other world.

526. It means that, after death,

527. the martyr lives and can still witness this world.

528. By the middle of the 1980s, the banks were rising up

529. and becoming ever more powerful in America.

530. What had started ten years before in New York,

531. the idea that the financial system could run society,

532. was spreading.

533. But unlike older systems of power, it was mostly invisible.

534. A writer called William Gibson

535. tried to dramatise what was happening

536. in a powerful, imaginative way, in a series of novels.

537. Gibson had noticed how the banks and the new corporations

538. were beginning to link themselves together through computer systems.

539. What they were creating was a series of giant networks of

540. information that were invisible to ordinary people

541. and to politicians.

542. But those networks gave the corporations

543. extraordinary new powers of control.

544. 'Good morning. South-West Development. May I help you?'

545. Gibson gave this new world a name.

546. He called it "cyberspace"

547. and his novels described a future that was dangerous and frightening.

548. Hackers could literally enter into cyberspace and as they did,

549. they travelled through systems that were so powerful

550. that they could reach out and crush intruders by destroying their minds.

551. In cyberspace, there were no laws and no politicians to protect you.

552. Just raw, brutal corporate power.

553. But then, a strange thing happened.

554. A new group of visionaries in America

555. took Gibson's idea of a hidden, secret world

556. and transformed it into something completely different.

557. They turned it into a dream of a new utopia.

558. They were the technological utopians who were rising up

559. on the West Coast of America.

560. They turned Gibson's idea on its head.

561. Instead of cyberspace being a frightening place,

562. dominated by powerful corporations,

563. they reinvented it as the very opposite.

564. A new, safe world where radical dreams could come true.

565. Ten years before, faced by the complexity of real politics,

566. the radicals had given up on the idea of changing the world.

567. But now, the computer utopians saw, in cyberspace,

568. an alternative reality.

569. A place they could retreat to away from the harsh right-wing politics

570. that now dominated Reagan's America.

571. The roots of this vision lay back in the counterculture

572. of the 1960s, and, above all, with LSD.

573. We've got some more acid over here if you want to go ahead.

574. Many of those who had taken LSD in the '60s

575. were convinced that it was more than just another drug,

576. that it opened human perception

577. and allowed people to see new realities

578. that were normally hidden from them.

579. See, the ones that have white in them are really great.

580. I feel like a rabbit.

581. It freed them from the narrow, limited view of the world

582. that was imposed on them by politicians and those in power.

583. In the United States, in the next, five, ten, 15 years,

584. you're going to see more and more people taking LSD and making it

585. a part of their lives, so there will be an LSD country within 15 years.

586. An LSD society, there will be less interest

587. in, obviously, warfare,

588. in power politics.

589. You know, politics today is a disease, it's a real addiction.

590. Politics, politics, politics, politics.

591. Don't politick, don't vote - these are old men's games.

592. Impotent and senile old man that want to put you

593. onto their old chess games of war and power.

594. 20 years later, the new networks of machines seemed to offer

595. a way to construct a real alternate reality.

596. Not just one that was chemically induced,

597. but a space that actually existed

598. in a parallel dimension to the real world.

599. And like with acid,

600. cyberspace could be a place where you would be liberated from the old,

601. corrupt hierarchies of politics and power and explore new ways of being.

602. One of the leading exponents of this idea was called John Perry Barlow.

603. In the '60s, he had written songs for the Grateful Dead

604. and been part of the acid counterculture.

605. Now, he organised what he called "cyberthons",

606. to try and bring the cyberspace movement together.

607. Well, you know, the cyberthon as it was originally conceived

608. was supposed to be...

609. .. the '90s equivalent of the acid test

610. and we had thought to involve some of the same personnel.

611. You and I and Timmy should sit down and talk. OK. That is good.

612. And it immediately acquired a financial quality

613. or a commercial quality that was initially

614. a little unsettling to an old hippy like me,

615. but as soon as I saw it actually working, then I thought,

616. "Ah, well, if you're going to have an acid test for the '90s,

617. "money better be involved."

618. Instead of having a glass barrier that separates you -

619. your mind - from the mind of the computer,

620. the computer pulls us inside and creates a world for us.

621. Incorporates everything that could be incorporated.

622. It incorporates experience itself.

623. Barlow then wrote a manifesto

624. that he called A Declaration Of Independence Of Cyberspace.

625. It was addressed to all politicians,

626. telling them to keep out of this new world.

627. It was going to be incredibly influential,

628. because what Barlow did was give a powerful picture of the internet

629. not as a network controlled by giant corporations,

630. but, instead, as a kind of magical, free place.

631. An alternative to the old systems of power.

632. It was a vision that would come to dominate the internet

633. over the next 20 years.

634. Governments of the industrial world,

635. cyberspace does not lie within your borders.

636. We are creating a world where anyone,

637. anywhere, may express his or her beliefs,

638. no matter how singular,

639. without fear of being coerced

640. into silence or conformity.

641. I declare the global social space we are building

642. to be naturally independent

643. of the tyrannies you seek to impose on us.

644. We will create a civilisation of the mind in cyberspace.

645. May it be more humane and fair

646. than the world your governments have made before.

647. It's begun.

648. This is the key to a new order.

649. This code disk means freedom.

650. But two young hackers in New York thought that Barlow

651. was describing a fantasy world,

652. that his vision bore no relationship at all

653. to what was really emerging online.

654. They were cult figures on the early online scene

655. and their fans followed and recorded them.

656. They called themselves Phiber Optik and Acid Phreak

657. and they spent their time exploring and breaking in

658. to giant computer networks that they knew

659. were the hard realities of modern digital power.

660. My specific instance, I was charged with conspiracy

661. to commit a few dozen "overacts", they called them.

662. Among a number of things having to do with computer trespass and...

663. and I guess computer eavesdropping, interception.

664. Unauthorised access to federal interest computers,

665. which is pretty vague law.

666. Communications network computers and so on.

667. In a notorious public debate online, the two hackers attacked Barlow.

668. What infuriated them most was Barlow's insistence

669. that there was no hierarchy

670. or controlling powers in the new cyber world.

671. The hackers set out to demonstrate that he was wrong.

672. Acid Phreak hacked into the computers of

673. a giant corporation called TRW.

674. TRW had originally built the systems

675. that ran the Cold War for the US military.

676. They had helped create the delicate balance of terror.

677. Now, TRW had adapted their computers to run a new system,

678. that of credit and debt.

679. Their computers gathered up the credit data of millions of Americans

680. and were being used by the banks to decide individuals' credit ratings.

681. The hackers broke into the TRW network,

682. stole Barlow's credit history and published it online.

683. The hackers were demonstrating the growing power of finance.

684. How the companies that ran the new systems of credit

685. knew more and more about you,

686. and, increasingly, used that information to control your destiny.

687. But the system that was allowing this to happen

688. were the new giant networks of information

689. connected through computer servers.

690. The hackers were questioning whether Barlow's utopian rhetoric

691. about cyberspace might really be a convenient camouflage

692. hiding the emergence of a new and growing power

693. that was way beyond politics.

694. But cyberspace was not the only imaginary story being created.

695. Faced with the humiliating defeat in the Lebanon,

696. President Reagan's government was desperate to shore up

697. the vision of a moral world

698. where a good America struggled against evil.

699. And to do this they were going to create a simple villain.

700. An imaginary enemy, one that would free them

701. from the paralysing complexity of real Middle-Eastern politics.

702. The perfect candidate was waiting in the wings.

703. Colonel Gaddafi, the ruler of Libya.

704. The Americans were going to ruthlessly use Colonel Gaddafi

705. to create a fake terrorist mastermind.

706. And Gaddafi was going to happily play along,

707. because it would turn him into a famous global figure.

708. Colonel Gaddafi had taken power in a coup in the 1970s

709. but from the very start,

710. he was convinced that he was more than just the leader of one country.

711. He believed that he was an international revolutionary

712. whose destiny was to challenge the power of the West.

713. Gentlemen, the Queen.

714. When he was a young officer,

715. Gaddafi had been sent to England for training

716. and he had detested the patronising racism

717. that he said he had found at the heart of British society.

718. Yes, I attended a course.

719. I had been in England in 1966 from February to August.

720. You had the best months.

721. I was in Beaconsfield,

722. a village called Beaconsfield,

723. in an army school.

724. In fact, we were ill-treated in that place from some British officers.

725. I think the officers were Jews,

726. maybe Jews.

727. Ill-treated in what sort of way?

728. In many ways.

729. They ill-treat us every time.

730. By being rude or by bullying or...?

731. In their own behaviour towards us, they ill-treated us.

732. They hate us in there

733. because of colonisation.

734. It is the result of colonising.

735. Once in power, Gaddafi had developed his own revolutionary theory,

736. which he called the Third Universal Theory.

737. It was an alternative, he said, to communism and capitalism.

738. He published it in a green book,

739. but practically no-one read it.

740. He had sent money and weapons to the IRA in Ireland

741. to help them overthrow the British ruling class.

742. But all the other Arab leaders rejected him and his ideas.

743. They thought that he was mad.

744. And by the mid-1980s, Gaddafi was an isolated figure

745. with no friends and no global influence.

746. Then, suddenly, that changed.

747. In December 1985,

748. terrorists attacked Rome and Vienna airports simultaneously,

749. killing 19 people,

750. including five Americans.

751. There was growing pressure on President Reagan to retaliate.

752. It's time to rename your State Department

753. the Capitulation Department.

754. Get off of your stick, Mr President.

755. The American people are sick and tired of being kicked around.

756. You talk tough,

757. let's see you use some of these billions and billions

758. and billions of dollars' worth of weapons

759. that you've asked us to approve.

760. Your words are cheap talk.

761. President Reagan immediately announced

762. that Colonel Gaddafi was definitely behind the attacks.

763. These murderers could not carry out their crimes

764. without the sanctuary and support

765. provided by regimes such as Colonel Gaddafi's in Libya.

766. The Rome and Vienna murders are only the latest

767. in a series of brutal terrorist acts committed with Gaddafi's backing.

768. But the European security services who investigated the attacks

769. were convinced that Libya was not involved at all

770. and that the mastermind behind the attacks was, in fact, Syria -

771. that the terrorists had been directed

772. by the Syrian intelligence agencies.

773. But the Americans say that the attack at Rome Airport

774. was organised by Gaddafi, not by Damascus. What do you say?

775. No, we don't have any evidence... You have no evidence?

776. .. supporting such an... affirmation.

777. The only evidence we have

778. shows a Syrian connection.

779. You say that it was Libya and the President

780. said the evidence of Libya's culpability was irrefutable. Yeah.

781. But the Italian authorities to whom I've spoken say emphatically

782. on the record that their investigations have shown

783. that it was entirely masterminded by Syria.

784. I don't agree with that at all.

785. Well, they interrogated the surviving terrorists.

786. I must just say I don't agree with that.

787. But you've no evidence that Libya was in on the planning either.

788. Our evidence on Libya is circumstantial, but very strong.

789. But why does the President then say it's "irrefutable",

790. if you call it "circumstantial"?

791. Well, people can be convicted and sentenced in our courts

792. on circumstantial evidence.

793. But what made it even more confusing

794. was that although there seemed to be no evidence

795. that Gaddafi had been behind the attacks,

796. he made no attempt to deny the allegations.

797. Instead, he went the other way

798. and turned the crisis into a global drama...

799. It is not a time of saying.

800. It is a time of war,

801. a time of confrontation.

802. .. threatening suicide attacks against America.

803. Gaddafi now started to play a role

804. that was going to become very familiar.

805. He grabbed the publicity that had been given to him

806. by the Americans and used it dramatically.

807. He promoted himself as an international revolutionary

808. who would help to liberate oppressed peoples around the world,

809. even the blacks in America.

810. Gaddafi arranged for a live satellite link

811. to a mass meeting of the Nation Of Islam in Chicago.

812. Brothers and sisters,

813. it is with great honour and privilege that I present to you

814. the leader of the al-Fateh Revolution from Libya,

815. our brother Muammar al-Gaddafi.

816. Gaddafi told them that Libya was now their ally

817. in their struggle against white America.

818. ..To express my full support and support of my country

819. to your struggle for freedom, for emancipation.

820. Gaddafi promised that he would supply weapons

821. to create a black army in America of 400,000 men.

822. "If white America refuses to accept blacks as US citizens,"

823. he told them, "it must therefore be destroyed."

824. Gaddafi also invited a group of German rocket scientists

825. to come to Libya to build him a rocket.

826. He insisted that it had no military purpose.

827. Libya was now going to explore outer space.

828. I think it is peaceful and civil...

829. Civilian?

830. .. civilian activity

831. for investigation of space

832. and something like this

833. and it has nothing to do with any military things.

834. But no-one believed him.

835. Journalists warned that Gaddafi was really preparing to attack Europe,

836. vividly dramatising the new danger.

837. That is something like this

838. which goes that way to put something into space.

839. But the same device tilted, say, to an angle of 45 degrees

840. could, of course, become something very different -

841. a missile possibly carrying a warhead.

842. That would put Libya within range of an enormous area.

843. A chilling proposition with its range of 2,000km.

844. The Americans and Gaddafi now became locked together

845. in a cycle of mutual reinforcement.

846. In the process, a powerful new image was created

847. that was going to capture the imagination of the West.

848. Gaddafi became a global supervillain,

849. at the head of what was called a "rogue state" -

850. a madman who threatened the stability of the world.

851. And Gaddafi was loving every minute of it.

852. So, you think, in the past,

853. his decisions sometimes have been taken too quickly...

854. Maybe, maybe. .. on world affairs? Maybe.

855. I think, sometimes, that is what has made people in the world

856. nervous of you, perhaps? Maybe.

857. Then, there was another terrorist attack

858. at a discotheque in West Berlin.

859. A bomb killed an American soldier and injured hundreds.

860. The Americans released what they said were intercepts

861. by the National Security Agency

862. that proved that Colonel Gaddafi was behind the bombing

863. and a dossier that they said proved that he was also the mastermind

864. behind a whole range of other attacks.

865. President Reagan ordered the Pentagon

866. to prepare to bomb Libya.

867. But again, there were doubts -

868. this time, within the American Government itself.

869. There were concerns that analysts were being pressured

870. to make a case that didn't really exist...

871. .. and to do it, they were taking Gaddafi's rhetoric about himself

872. as a global revolutionary and his manic ravings

873. and then re-presenting them as fact.

874. And, in the process, together,

875. the Americans and Gaddafi were constructing a fictional world.

876. The analysts were certainly, I'm convinced...

877. pressured into developing a prima facie case

878. against the Libyan Government.

879. From the somewhat incoherent ravings of a maniac,

880. both interceptions of a clandestine nature

881. and interceptions of an open radio broadcast or whatever,

882. as well as other sources, quotations of his,

883. one can assemble a neatly-put-together package

884. demonstrating that the man had violent interests

885. against the United States and its European allies.

886. The European intelligence agencies

887. told the Americans that they were wrong,

888. that it was Syria that was behind the bombing, not Libya.

889. But the Americans had decided to attack Libya

890. because they couldn't face the dangerous consequences

891. of attacking Syria.

892. Instead, they went for Gaddafi,

893. a man without friends or allies.

894. Libya had less downsided consequences, if you will.

895. There's less Arab support for Gaddafi,

896. we figured there would be less Soviet support for Gaddafi.

897. There's no question that Libya was more vulnerable than Syria and Iran.

898. He was a soft target? And that is certainly an element, of course.

899. In April 1986, the Americans attacked Libya.

900. Their targets included Colonel Gaddafi's own house.

901. Immediately after the attack,

902. Gaddafi appeared in the ruins to describe what had happened.

903. The family were asleep and my wife

904. was, that day, tied down to the bed

905. because she had a slipped disc.

906. I tried to rescue the children

907. and the house started to collapse,

908. as you can see.

909. And the bombs started to land.

910. They concentrated on the children's room

911. so that they would kill all the children.

912. Our small adopted daughter was killed

913. and two of our children were injured.

914. But, yet again, Gaddafi might have been lying.

915. Ever since then,

916. there have been rumours that his adopted daughter actually survived.

917. But many other children were killed in the raid

918. because the American bombing was so inaccurate.

919. Gaddafi realised that the attention of the whole world

920. was now focused on him

921. and he grabbed the moment to promote his own revolutionary theory,

922. The Third Way, as a global alternative to democracy.

923. I feel that I'm really responsible

924. for conveying the Third Way theory and the Green Book

925. to the rising generations, to the young American and British people,

926. so that we can rescue America and Britain

927. and these generations of young people from this theory,

928. this electoral party theory

929. which enabled an imbecile like Reagan

930. to rule the mightiest power on Earth

931. and use it to destroy other people's homes

932. and enabled a harlot like Thatcher to rule a great nation like Britain.

933. Wow, look at that. What the heck is that?

934. Oh, my God, look at that.

935. Holy crap!

936. It's just moving really slowly. Wow!

937. Look, look, look! Come here, come here! What is it doing?

938. What the heck?

939. Guys, it's...

940. Whoa! Oh, my gosh!

941. Wow!

942. What is happening? Dude, what is happening?

943. What is going on? Oh, my gosh!

944. Oh, my God, guys! Guys, is that a freaking UFO?

945. Wait, can you get a good video? What is it? What the hell?

946. In the 1980s, more and more people in the United States

947. reported seeing unexplained objects and lights in the sky.

948. At the same time, investigators who believed in UFOs

949. revealed that they had discovered top-secret government documents

950. that stated that alien craft had visited Earth.

951. The documents had been hidden for 20 years

952. and they seemed to prove that there had been a giant cover-up.

953. But, actually, the reality was even stranger.

954. The American Government might have been making it all up,

955. that they had created a fake conspiracy

956. to deliberately mislead the population.

957. The lights that people imagined were UFOs

958. may, in reality, have been new high-technology weapons

959. that the US Government were testing.

960. The government had developed the weapons

961. because they, in turn,

962. imagined that the Soviet Union was far stronger than it was

963. and still wanted to conquer the world.

964. The government wanted to keep the weapons secret,

965. but they couldn't always hide their appearance in the skies

966. so it is alleged that they chose a number of people to use

967. to spread the rumour that these were really alien visitations.

968. One of those chosen was called Paul Bennewitz

969. who lived outside a giant air base in New Mexico

970. and had noticed strange things going on.

971. Years later,

972. I sat down with Paul at dinner

973. and told Paul exactly that everything we did

974. was a sanctioned counterintelligence operation to convince him

975. that what he was seeing was UFOs

976. and that what we didn't want him to know was

977. that he had tapped into something on the base

978. and we didn't want him to ever disclose that.

979. We kind of planted the seed in Paul

980. that what he was seeing and what he was hearing

981. and what he was collecting was, in fact,

982. probably, maybe, UFOs.

983. Bennewitz and others chosen by the agency

984. were, it is alleged, given a series of forged documents.

985. Many of them were top-secret memos by the military

986. describing sightings of unidentified aerial vehicles.

987. The documents spread like wildfire

988. and they formed the basis for the wave of belief in UFOs

989. that would spread through America in the 1990s.

990. What the fuck is that? That's a...

991. That's crazy, bro.

992. Is that that space, uh...?

993. And it also fuelled the wider growing belief

994. that governments lied to you -

995. that conspiracies were real.

996. What the Reagan administration were doing,

997. both with Colonel Gaddafi and with the UFOs,

998. was a blurring of fact and fiction

999. but it was part of an even broader programme.

1000. The President's advisers had given it a name -

1001. they called it "perception management"

1002. and it became a central part of the American Government

1003. during the 1980s.

1004. The aim was to tell dramatic stories that grabbed the public imagination,

1005. not just about the Middle East,

1006. but about Central America

1007. and the Soviet Union

1008. and it didn't matter if the stories were true or not,

1009. providing they distracted people and you, the politician,

1010. from having to deal with

1011. the intractable complexities of the real world.

1012. Reality became less and less

1013. of an important factor in American politics.

1014. It wasn't what was real that was driving anything

1015. or the facts driving anything.

1016. It was how you could turn those facts or twist those facts

1017. or even make up the facts to make your opponent look bad.

1018. So, perception management became a device

1019. and the facts could be twisted. Anything could be anything.

1020. It becomes how can you manipulate the American people?

1021. And, in the process, reality becomes what?

1022. Reality becomes simply something to play with to achieve that end.

1023. Reality is not important in this context.

1024. Reality is simply something that you handle.

1025. But something was about to happen that would demonstrate dramatically

1026. just how far the American Government had detached from reality.

1027. The Soviet Empire was about to implode.

1028. And no-one, none of the politicians,

1029. or the journalists,

1030. or the think tank experts,

1031. or the economists,

1032. or the academics saw it coming.

1033. That's it! Whoo!

1034. Get ready to work out.

1035. The collapse of the Soviet Union

1036. also had a powerful effect on the West.

1037. For many, it symbolised the final failure of the dream

1038. that politics could be used to build a new kind of world.

1039. What was going to emerge instead was a new system that had nothing

1040. to do with politics.

1041. A system whose aim was not to try and change things,

1042. but rather, to manage a post-political world.

1043. One of the first people to describe this dramatic change

1044. was a left-wing German political thinker called Ulrich Beck.

1045. Beck said that any politician who believed that they could take

1046. control of society, and drive it forward to build

1047. a better future, was now seen as dangerous.

1048. In the past, politicians might have been able to do this.

1049. But now they were faced with what he called "a runaway world."

1050. Where things were so complex and interconnected,

1051. and modern technologies so potentially dangerous

1052. that it was impossible to predict the outcomes of anything you did.

1053. The catalogue of environmental disasters proved this.

1054. Politicians would have to give up any idea of trying to change

1055. the world.

1056. Instead, their new aim would be to try and predict the dangers

1057. in the future, and then, find ways to avoid those risks.

1058. Although Beck came from the political left,

1059. the world he saw coming was deeply conservative.

1060. The picture he gave

1061. was of a political class reduced to trying to steer society

1062. into a dark and frightening future.

1063. Constantly peering forward

1064. and trying to see the risks coming towards them.

1065. Their only aim, to avoid those risks

1066. and keep society stable.

1067. It only lasted for a few seconds so you were basically shocked,

1068. you really didn't know what was going on at the time.

1069. Where were you in the building and where was the explosion?

1070. Oh, my God!

1071. But a system that could anticipate the future

1072. and keep society stable was already being built,

1073. pieced together from all kinds of different,

1074. and sometimes surprising, sources.

1075. All of them outside politics.

1076. One part of it was taking shape in a tiny town

1077. in the far north-west of the United States called East Wenatchee.

1078. It was a giant computer

1079. whose job was to make the future predictable.

1080. The man building it was a banker called Larry Fink.

1081. Back in 1986,

1082. Mr Fink's career had collapsed.

1083. Shoot!

1084. He lost $100 million in a deal and had been sacked.

1085. He became determined it wouldn't happen again.

1086. Fink started a company called BlackRock and built

1087. a computer he called Aladdin.

1088. It is housed in a series of large sheds

1089. in the apple orchards outside Wenatchee.

1090. Fink's aim was to use the computer to predict, with certainty,

1091. what the risk of any deal or investment was going to be.

1092. The computer constantly monitors the world

1093. and it take things that it sees happening,

1094. and then, compares them to events in the past.

1095. It can do this because it has, in its memory, a vast history

1096. of the past 50 years. Not just financial, but all kinds of events.

1097. Out of the millions and millions of correlations,

1098. the computer then spots possible disasters,

1099. possible dangers lying in the future

1100. and moves the investments to avoid any radical change

1101. and keep the system stable.

1102. Today, I'm going to deliver 1.8 million reports.

1103. Execute 25,000 trades.

1104. And avert 3,000 disasters.

1105. I'm going to monitor interest rates in Europe.

1106. Silver prices in Asia. Droughts in the Midwest.

1107. I'm going to witness 4 billion shares change hands on the

1108. New York Stock Exchange.

1109. And record the effects on 14 trillion in assets

1110. across 20,000 portfolios.

1111. I am Aladdin. I am Aladdin.

1112. And, today, I'll find the numbers behind the numbers.

1113. I will see the trends the models don't.

1114. The connections. The risks.

1115. I am Aladdin. I am Aladdin, and I will get the data right.

1116. I am 25 million lines of code.

1117. Written by hundreds of people.

1118. Across two decades.

1119. I'm smarter than any algorithm.

1120. More powerful than any processor.

1121. Because I am Aladdin.

1122. Because I am Aladdin.

1123. I am Aladdin.

1124. I am Aladdin...

1125. Aladdin has proved to be incredibly successful.

1126. The assets it guides and controls

1127. now amount to $15 trillion,

1128. which is 7% of the world's total wealth.

1129. But Wenatchee was also a dramatic example

1130. of another kind of craving

1131. for stability and reassurance.

1132. More of its citizens took Prozac

1133. than practically any other town in America.

1134. When a person's central nervous system is changed by an SSRI,

1135. with that medicine they will view things differently

1136. and they will be strangers.

1137. They look at things differently.

1138. I have a chemical up here that changes me.

1139. I think differently.

1140. For me it was like walking around like this for my whole life

1141. and really not knowing that I was near-sighted. I mean, really.

1142. I mean, no-one had ever offered me glasses.

1143. And then, all of a sudden, here comes somebody that says,

1144. "OK, now try these on. Try this Prozac on."

1145. And I tried it on and for the first time in my life I went,

1146. "Whoa! Is this the way reality really is?"

1147. Your perception can be changed and it's frightening

1148. and it's scary to people.

1149. It speaks of science fiction almost.

1150. Well, the medicine just kind of lets you listen to what needs to go on.

1151. And then your doctor, every time you come back, says,

1152. "You're looking so much better."

1153. And then every time I go in he goes,

1154. "You're so beautiful." You know?

1155. He isn't even sucking up. He's being nice, you know?

1156. "You're beautiful, you're nice, you're friendly.

1157. "You've got so much going for you." I think, "Yeah, I do."

1158. So, I go out and tell my friends,

1159. "I feel so much better about myself."

1160. Mom goes out, "Oh, I feel so much better about myself."

1161. So, your friends start saying, "I've seen such an improvement.

1162. "I've seen such improvement."

1163. And everybody improves all the way around. They see improvement.

1164. It's like everybody's brainwashing each other into being happy.

1165. But there was a more effective way of reassuring people

1166. that was being developed that did not involve medication.

1167. It, too, came from computer systems

1168. but this time, artificial intelligence.

1169. But the way to do it had been discovered by accident.

1170. Back in the 1960s, there had been optimistic dreams

1171. that it would be possible to develop computers

1172. that could think like human beings.

1173. Scientists then spent years trying to programme the rules

1174. that governed human thought...

1175. .. but they never worked.

1176. One computer scientist, at MIT,

1177. became so disillusioned that he decided to build a computer programme

1178. that would parody these hopeless attempts.

1179. He was called Joseph Weizenbaum

1180. and he built what he claimed was a computer psychotherapist.

1181. Just like a therapist, people could come and talk to the machine

1182. by typing in their problems.

1183. Weizenbaum called the programme "Eliza".

1184. He modelled it on a real psychotherapist called Carl Rogers

1185. who was famous for simply repeating back to the patient

1186. what they had just said.

1187. And that is what Eliza did.

1188. The patient sat in front of the screen and typed in

1189. what they were feeling

1190. and the programme repeated it back to them,

1191. often in the form of a question.

1192. He says I'm depressed much of the time.

1193. Well, I need some help.

1194. That much seems certain.

1195. One of the first people to use Eliza was Weizenbaum's secretary

1196. and her reaction was something that he had not predicted at all.

1197. I asked her to my office and sat her down at the keyboard

1198. and then she began to type and, of course,

1199. I looked over her shoulder to make sure everything

1200. was operating properly. After two or three interchanges

1201. with the machine she turned to me and she said,

1202. "Would you mind leaving the room, please?"

1203. And yet she knew, as Weizenbaum did, that Eliza didn't understand

1204. a single word that was being typed into it.

1205. You're like my father in some ways.

1206. You don't argue with me. Why do you think I don't argue with you?

1207. You're afraid of me. Does it please you to think I'm afraid of you?

1208. My father's afraid of everybody.

1209. My father's afraid of everybody...

1210. Weizenbaum was astonished.

1211. He discovered that everyone who tried Eliza became engrossed.

1212. They would sit for hours telling the machine

1213. about their inner feelings

1214. and incredibly intimate details of their lives.

1215. They also liked it because it was free

1216. of any kind of patronising elitism.

1217. One person said, "After all, the computer doesn't burn out,

1218. "look down on you, or try to have sex with you."

1219. What Eliza showed was that, in an age of individualism,

1220. what made people feel secure

1221. was having themselves reflected back to them.

1222. Just like in a mirror.

1223. Artificial intelligence changed direction

1224. and started to create new systems that did just that,

1225. but on a giant scale.

1226. They were called intelligent agents.

1227. They worked by monitoring individuals,

1228. gathering vast amounts of data about their past behaviour

1229. and then looked for patterns and correlations

1230. from which they could predict what they would want in the future.

1231. It was a system that ordered the world in a way

1232. that was centred around you.

1233. And in an age of anxious individualism,

1234. frightened of the future,

1235. that was reassuring, just like Eliza.

1236. A safe bubble that protected you

1237. from the complexities of the world outside.

1238. And the applications of this new direction

1239. proved fruitful and profitable.

1240. If you liked that, you'll love this.

1241. What was rising up in different ways

1242. was a new system that promised to keep the world stable.

1243. Its tentacles reached into every area of our lives.

1244. Finance promised that it could control the unpredictability

1245. of the free market...

1246. .. while individuals were more and more monitored

1247. to stabilise their physical and mental states.

1248. And, increasingly, the intelligent agents online

1249. predicted what people would want in the future

1250. and how they would behave.

1251. But the biggest change was to politics.

1252. In a world where the overriding aim was now stability,

1253. politics became just part of a wider system of managing the world.

1254. The old idea of democratic politics,

1255. that it gave a voice to the weak against the powerful, was eroded.

1256. And a resentment began to quietly grow out on the edges of society.

1257. But the new system did have a dangerous flaw.

1258. Because in the real world, not everything can be predicted

1259. by reading data from the past.

1260. And someone who was about to discover that,

1261. to his own cost, was Donald Trump.

1262. One day a man called Jess Marcum received a phone call.

1263. It was from Donald Trump

1264. and Trump was desperate for help.

1265. Marcum was a strange, mysterious figure.

1266. He had been a nuclear scientist in the 1950s

1267. and studied the effect of radiation from nuclear weapons

1268. on the human body.

1269. Then Marcum had gone to Las Vegas and become obsessed by gambling.

1270. He had a photographic memory and he used it to instantly

1271. process the data of the games as they were played.

1272. From that, he could predict the outcome.

1273. And he always won.

1274. The Las Vegas gangsters were fascinated by him.

1275. They called him "The Automat".

1276. Where are we going? Let's go. Go, go, go.

1277. Donald Trump was one of the heroes of the age.

1278. But, in reality, much of this success was a facade.

1279. The banks that had lent Trump millions

1280. had discovered that he could no longer

1281. pay the interest on the loans.

1282. Trump's empire was facing bankruptcy.

1283. His wife Ivana hated him because he was having an affair

1284. with Miss Hawaiian Tropic 1985.

1285. And then, a famous Japanese gambler called Akio Kashiwagi

1286. came to one of Trump's casinos

1287. and started to win millions of dollars

1288. in an extraordinary run of luck.

1289. Trump, who was desperate for money,

1290. panicked as day-after-day he watched millions

1291. being siphoned out of his casino.

1292. So, he turned for help to Jess Marcum.

1293. Marcum came to Trump's casino in Atlantic City.

1294. He analysed all the data about the way the Kashiwagi had been playing.

1295. He then told Trump to suggest a particular high-stakes game

1296. that he knew the Japanese gambler could not resist.

1297. His model, Marcum said, predicted that Kashiwagi had to lose.

1298. And after five agonising days, he did.

1299. Kashiwagi lost $10 million and he gave up.

1300. Donald Trump was elated.

1301. He thought he'd got his money back.

1302. Before Kashiwagi could pay his debt,

1303. he was hacked to death in his kitchen by Yakuza gangsters...

1304. .. and Donald Trump didn't get his money.

1305. Trump's business went bankrupt

1306. and he was forced to sell most of his buildings to the banks.

1307. And he married Miss Hawaiian Tropic.

1308. In the future, he would sell his name to other people

1309. to put on their buildings

1310. and he himself would become a celebrity tycoon.

1311. President Assad didn't want stability.

1312. He wanted revenge.

1313. In December 1988,

1314. a bomb exploded on a Pan Am plane over Lockerbie in Scotland.

1315. Almost immediately, investigators and journalists

1316. pointed the finger at Syria.

1317. "The bombing had been done," they said, "in revenge for the Americans

1318. "shooting down an Iranian airliner in the Gulf a few months before."

1319. And for 18 months, everyone agreed that this was the truth.

1320. But then, a strange thing happened.

1321. The security agencies said that they had been wrong.

1322. It hadn't been Syria at all.

1323. It was Libya who had been behind the Lockerbie bombing.

1324. But many journalists and politicians did not believe it.

1325. They were convinced that the switch had happened

1326. for the most cynical of reasons.

1327. That America and Britain desperately needed Assad as an ally

1328. in the coming Gulf War against Saddam Hussein.

1329. So, once again, they blamed Colonel Gaddafi as the terrorist mastermind.

1330. Syria, of course, was, unfortunately, accused

1331. of many terrorist outrages and of harbouring terrorist groups.

1332. It appears that we have now restored relations with them,

1333. as have the Americans. They're now our friends,

1334. although we've got no real assurances on the past whatsoever.

1335. It strikes me as very strange indeed that many of the things

1336. we thought were previously the responsibility of Syria

1337. have now, dramatically, become the responsibility of Libya.

1338. But Assad was not really in control.

1339. Because he had released forces

1340. that no-one would be able to control.

1341. The force that, ten years before,

1342. he had brought from Iran to attack the West - the human bomb -

1343. was now about to jump, like a virus,

1344. from Shia to Sunni Islam.

1345. In December 1992, the militant group Hamas

1346. kidnapped an Israeli border guard and stabbed him to death.

1347. The Israeli response was overwhelming.

1348. They arrested 415 members of Hamas,

1349. put them on buses and took them to the top of a bleak mountain

1350. in southern Lebanon.

1351. They left them there -

1352. and refused to allow any humanitarian aid through.

1353. But the Israelis had dumped the Hamas militants

1354. in an area controlled by Hezbollah.

1355. They spent six months there,

1356. and during that time, they learnt from Hezbollah

1357. how powerful suicide bombing could be.

1358. Hezbollah told them how they had used it

1359. to force the Israelis out of Beirut

1360. and back to the border.

1361. The first sign that the idea had spread to Hamas

1362. was when a group of the deportees

1363. marched in protest towards the Israeli border,

1364. dressed as martyrs, as the Israelis shelled them.

1365. But it soon became more than just theatre.

1366. Hamas began a wave of suicide attacks in Israel.

1367. Just before nine, at the height of Tel Aviv's rush hour,

1368. the bomb ripped apart a commuter bus.

1369. An amateur cameraman recorded the scene in the moments afterwards

1370. as a dazed woman was helped out of the smouldering wreckage.

1371. I didn't want to believe that under my house there is a bomb.

1372. And when I realised it's a bomb, I...

1373. I started to cry.

1374. Because it was the first time I saw it in Tel Aviv.

1375. Hamas sent the bombers into the heart of Israeli cities

1376. to blow themselves up and kill as many around them as possible.

1377. In doing this, Hamas were going much further than Hezbollah ever had.

1378. They were targeting civilians,

1379. something Hezbollah had never done.

1380. The tactic shocked the Sunni world.

1381. This was something completely alien to its history.

1382. Not only did the Koran forbid suicide,

1383. but Sunni Islam did not have any rituals of self-sacrifice -

1384. unlike the Shias.

1385. The most senior religious leader in Saudi Arabia

1386. insisted it was wrong.

1387. But a mainstream theologian from Egypt

1388. called Sheikh Qaradawi seized the moment.

1389. He issued a fatwa that justified the attacks.

1390. "And," he added, "it was also justified to kill civilians,

1391. "because, in Israel, everyone -

1392. "including women - serve as reservists.

1393. "So, really, they are all part of the enemy army."

1394. It's not suicide. It is martyrdom in the name of God.

1395. Islamic theologians and jurisprudence

1396. have debated this issue.

1397. Israeli women are not like women in our society,

1398. because Israeli women are militarised.

1399. Secondly, I consider this type of martyrdom operation

1400. as an indication of justice of Allah, our Almighty.

1401. Allah is just.

1402. Through his infinite wisdom,

1403. he has given the weak what the strong do not possess.

1404. And that is their ability to turn their bodies into bombs

1405. like the Palestinians do.

1406. Hamas kept sending the bombers into Israel.

1407. Sometimes day-after-day.

1408. The horror overwhelmed Israeli society

1409. and it completely destroyed the ability of politics

1410. to solve the Palestinian crisis.

1411. Instead, in the Israeli election of 1996,

1412. Benjamin Netanyahu took power.

1413. He turned against the peace process, which was exactly what Hamas wanted.

1414. And from then on, the two sides became locked together

1415. in ever more horrific cycles of violence.

1416. The human bomb had destroyed the very thing

1417. that President Assad had first wanted.

1418. A real political solution to the Palestinian question.

1419. It was just after one o'clock

1420. and the market was full of shoppers.

1421. Streams of ambulances came to carry away the dead and the injured.

1422. It was a place of appalling suffering.

1423. But even with the first grief

1424. came the immediate political impact on the peace process.

1425. Peace impossible!

1426. This moment, it will be the end!

1427. It must be the end of this bloody peace process.

1428. And, in America, all optimistic visions of the future

1429. had also disappeared.

1430. Instead everyone in society - not just the politicians -

1431. but the scientists, the journalists, and all kinds of experts

1432. had begun to focus on the dangers that might be hidden in the future.

1433. This, in turn, created a pessimistic mood

1434. that then began to spread out from the rational technocratic world

1435. and infect the whole of the culture.

1436. And everyone became possessed by dark forebodings,

1437. imagining the very worst that might happen.

1438. RUMBLING, SHATTERING GLASS

1439. The attacks in September 2001 were suicide bombs,

1440. but now on a huge scale.

1441. They demonstrated the terrifying power of this new force

1442. to penetrate all defences.

1443. They had come to kill thousands of Americans on their own soil.

1444. 20 years before,

1445. President Reagan had been confronted by the first suicide bombers.

1446. They had been unleashed by President Assad of Syria

1447. to force America out of the Middle East.

1448. But rather than confront the complexity of Syria

1449. and Israel and the Palestinian problem,

1450. America had retreated and left Syria -

1451. and suicide bombing -

1452. to fester and mutate.

1453. They had gone instead for Colonel Gaddafi

1454. and turned him into an evil global terrorist.

1455. But, in the process, this changed the way people saw

1456. and understood terrorism.

1457. Instead of a violence born out of political struggles for power,

1458. it became replaced by a much simpler image of an evil tyrant

1459. at the head of a rogue state

1460. who became more like an archcriminal

1461. who wanted to terrorise the world.

1462. All the politics and power dropped away.

1463. The problem was just them and their evil personalities.

1464. And after 9/11, this led to a new, and equally simple, idea.

1465. That if only you could remove these tyrannical figures,

1466. then the grateful people of their country

1467. would transform naturally into a democracy,

1468. because they would be free of the evil.

1469. We owe it to the future of civilisation

1470. not to allow the world's worst leaders

1471. to develop and deploy, and therefore,

1472. blackmail freedom-loving countries

1473. with the world's worst weapons.

1474. We know they've already got chemical and biological weapons there.

1475. We know that they're certainly doing their best

1476. to acquire nuclear weapons technology.

1477. If we allow them to do that,

1478. and do nothing about it, then,

1479. I think, later generations will consider us deeply irresponsible.

1480. Both Tony Blair and George Bush became possessed by the idea

1481. of ridding the world of Saddam Hussein.

1482. So possessed that they believed any story

1483. that proved his evil intentions.

1484. And the line between reality and fiction became ever more blurred.

1485. In September 2002, the head of MI6 rushed to Downing Street

1486. to tell Blair excitedly that they had finally found the source

1487. that confirmed everything.

1488. The source, he said, had "direct access"

1489. to Saddam Hussein's chemical weapons programme

1490. which was making vast quantities of VX and sarin nerve agents.

1491. The nerve agents were being loaded into "linked hollow glass spheres".

1492. But then someone in MI6 noticed

1493. that the detail the source was describing was identical

1494. to scenes in the 1996 movie The Rock,

1495. starring Sean Connery and Nicolas Cage.

1496. Really elegant string-of-pearls configuration.

1497. Unfortunately, incredibly unstable.

1498. What exactly does this stuff do?

1499. If the rocket renders it aerosol,

1500. it could take out the entire city of people.

1501. How? It's a cholinesterase inhibitor.

1502. Stops the brain from sending nerve messages down the spinal cord...

1503. A later report into the Iraq War pointed out,

1504. "Glass containers were not typically used in chemical munitions..."

1505. .. seizes your nervous system... Do not move that!

1506. ".. and the informant had obviously seen

1507. "a popular movie known as The Rock

1508. "that had inaccurately depicted nerve agents being carried

1509. "in glass beads or spheres."

1510. .. that's after your skin melts off.

1511. My God.

1512. That there is a threat from Saddam Hussein

1513. and the weapons of mass destruction that he has acquired,

1514. is not in doubt at all.

1515. Hafez al-Assad had died in 2000.

1516. His son, Bashar, became the new president of Syria.

1517. But he couldn't escape the inexorable logic

1518. of what his father had started.

1519. 20 years before, his father had sent Shi'ite suicide bombers

1520. to attack the Americans in Lebanon.

1521. Now, as America and Britain invaded Iraq,

1522. Bashar decided that he would copy his father.

1523. But what he was about to let loose would tear the Arab world apart -

1524. and then come back to try to destroy him.

1525. Bashar Assad had was never supposed to have been president.

1526. It was always going to have been his elder brother, Bassel.

1527. But then, Bassel had died in a car crash.

1528. So now, Bashar took over the giant palace

1529. that his father had built above Damascus.

1530. Up to this point, Bashar had not been interested in politics.

1531. He was fascinated by computers.

1532. He founded the Syrian Computer Society

1533. and brought the internet to the country.

1534. His favourite band was the Electric Light Orchestra.

1535. But now, he was president.

1536. And he set out to attack America.

1537. Bashar Assad was convinced that the invasion of Iraq

1538. was just the first step of a plot by the Western powers

1539. to take over the whole of the Middle East.

1540. He knew that the invasion had outraged

1541. many of the radical Islamists in Syria

1542. and what they most wanted to do was to go to Iraq and kill Americans.

1543. So, Bashar instructed the Syrian Intelligence Services

1544. to help them do this.

1545. Syrian agents set up a pipeline

1546. that began to feed thousands of militants across the border

1547. and into the heart of the insurgency.

1548. And it grew.

1549. Within a year, almost all of the foreign fighters

1550. from across the world were coming through Syria...

1551. .. and they brought suicide bombing with them.

1552. The Americans estimated that 90% of the suicide bombers in Iraq

1553. were foreign fighters.

1554. But it began to run out of control.

1555. Most of the jihadists had joined the group al-Qaeda in Iraq

1556. that then turned to killing Shi'ites in an attempt to create a civil war.

1557. And the force that had originally been invented by the Shi'ites,

1558. suicide bombing, now returned

1559. and started to kill them.

1560. Then, this.

1561. A moment of silence before people realised what was happening.

1562. A few seconds ago, we just had repeated explosions

1563. in the street below me.

1564. People are now fleeing in terror

1565. from the central square around the mosque.

1566. This is what everybody feared...

1567. We just heard another explosion in the distance.

1568. .. that somebody would try to target this religious festival

1569. to try to bring about a sectarian conflict in Iraq.

1570. There was panic.

1571. A terrified stampede.

1572. But some of these people were running into the next bombs.

1573. We counted at least six separate explosions.

1574. Tony Blair and George Bush were faced by disaster.

1575. Iraq was imploding.

1576. While, at home, they were being accused of lying to their own people

1577. to justify the invasion.

1578. What they desperately needed was something that would show

1579. that the invasion was having a good effect in the Arab world.

1580. So, they made an extraordinary decision.

1581. They turned for help to the man who they had always insisted

1582. was one of the world's most dangerous tyrants.

1583. Colonel Gaddafi.

1584. And, instead, they set out to make him their new best friend.

1585. It was going to be the highest achievement

1586. of Perception Management.

1587. A man who had been created by the West

1588. as a fake global supervillain

1589. was now going to be turned into a fake hero of democracy.

1590. And everyone, not just politicians, would become involved.

1591. Public relations, academics,

1592. television presenters, spies, and even musicians

1593. were all going to help reinvent Colonel Gaddafi.

1594. It would show just how many people in the Western Establishment

1595. had, by now, become the engineers of this fake world.

1596. Ever since he had been accused of the Lockerbie bombing,

1597. Colonel Gaddafi had been a complete outcast.

1598. The West had imposed sanctions on Libya

1599. and the economy was falling apart.

1600. But then, suddenly, Tony Blair broke live into the BBC evening news.

1601. The Prime Minister, Tony Blair, is about to make a statement,

1602. the BBC understands, from Downing Street.

1603. It's of international significance.

1604. He'll be making his statement at any moment now.

1605. We can see pictures of him in Durham...

1606. This evening... Here he is.

1607. .. Colonel Gaddafi has confirmed that Libya has, in the past,

1608. sought to develop weapons-of-mass-destruction

1609. capabilities.

1610. Libya has now declared its intention to dismantle

1611. its weapons of mass destruction completely.

1612. This decision by Colonel Gaddafi is a historic one,

1613. and a courageous one, and I applaud it.

1614. Today, in Tripoli,

1615. the leader of Libya,

1616. Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi...

1617. .. publically confirmed his commitment to disclose and dismantle

1618. all weapons-of-mass-destruction programmes in his country.

1619. Colonel Gaddafi now became,

1620. for Western politicians, a heroic figure.

1621. His decision to give up his weapons of mass destruction

1622. seemed to prove that the invasion of Iraq

1623. could transform the Middle East.

1624. And Tony Blair travelled to meet Gaddafi in his desert tent.

1625. To welcome him back into what one journalist called,

1626. "The community of civilised nations."

1627. But, as in the past,

1628. nothing was what it seemed with Colonel Gaddafi.

1629. In reality, Gaddafi did not really have

1630. the terrifying weapons of mass destruction

1631. that he was promising to destroy.

1632. His nuclear programme had stuttered to a halt long ago

1633. and never produced anything dangerous.

1634. He had managed to buy some equipment on the black market,

1635. but his technicians had been unable to assemble it.

1636. His biological weapons were non-existent.

1637. All he had was some old mustard gas in leaking barrels.

1638. But now, he had to pretend to have a terrifying arsenal of weapons.

1639. And the West had to pretend

1640. that they had avoided another global threat.

1641. And then the made-up stories became even more complicated.

1642. As part of the deal, the West said that if Gaddafi admitted

1643. that Libya had done the Lockerbie bombing,

1644. then they would lift the sanctions.

1645. But many of those who had investigated Lockerbie

1646. were still convinced that Libya hadn't done it.

1647. That, really, it had been Syria.

1648. But Colonel Gaddafi confessed.

1649. His son, Saif, was interviewed about this confession.

1650. He said that his father was simply pretending

1651. that he had been behind the Lockerbie bombing

1652. to get the sanctions lifted.

1653. That new lies were being built on top of old lies

1654. to construct a completely make-believe world.

1655. You have to accept, or you had to accept at the time,

1656. a responsibility, because you have to accept responsibilities,

1657. you have to pay compensation in order to get rid of sanction.

1658. We did that, not because we are convinced that we did it,

1659. but because of the final exit out of this nightmare.

1660. So, what you're saying is that you accept responsibility,

1661. but you're not admitting that you did it. Yes.

1662. And this is all a sham,

1663. you're saying, just to get sanctions over with

1664. so that you can start normal diplomatic relations with the West.

1665. OK. OK. What's wrong with that?

1666. It's a very cynical way to behave, as a country, isn't it?

1667. Many people would say... First of all...

1668. I mean, the Americans and the British,

1669. they told us to write that letter.

1670. They told us to pay compensation.

1671. And then, they opened their embassies

1672. and they restored their relation.

1673. They came to us.

1674. It was their game. Not our game.

1675. Does the... Does the leader know there's a picture on the television?

1676. Will you tell him? Oh, good. Thank you.

1677. Public relations companies then came to Libya

1678. to do what they called "reframing the narrative".

1679. One firm was paid $3 million to turn Gaddafi

1680. into what they described as a modern world thinker.

1681. OK. We're going in ten.

1682. They did this by bringing other famous world thinkers

1683. and TV presenters out to Libya to meet the colonel

1684. and discuss his theories.

1685. Hello, and welcome to Libya In The Global Age,

1686. A Conversation With Muammar Gaddafi.

1687. But first, let's get the story so far of Libya.

1688. One world thinker was called Lord Anthony Giddens.

1689. Coincidentally, he had a theory which he called "The Third Way"

1690. which had inspired Tony Blair.

1691. Colonel Gaddafi's own theory was called "The Third Universal Theory."

1692. Lord Giddens later wrote about his talks

1693. with the Libyan leader.

1694. "Colonel Gaddafi likes my term 'the third way'

1695. "because his own political philosophy

1696. "is a version of this idea.

1697. "He makes many intelligent and perceptive points.

1698. "I leave enlivened and encouraged."

1699. That for 40 years, the leader of Libya, Muammar Gaddafi...

1700. And then, Colonel Gaddafi achieved his lifelong dream.

1701. He was invited to address the United Nations.

1702. He spent almost two hours explaining his Third International Theory.

1703. And also demanding an investigation

1704. into the shootings of President Kennedy and Martin Luther King.

1705. When he was in New York, Gaddafi was offered a tent,

1706. just like the one he had at home,

1707. in the gardens of a grand mansion.

1708. The man who made the offer was Donald Trump.

1709. 'I've dealt with everybody.

1710. 'And by the way, I can tell you something else!' What?

1711. 'I've dealt with Gaddafi.'

1712. What did you do? 'Excuse me. I rented him a piece of land.

1713. 'He paid me more for one night than the land was worth

1714. 'for the whole year or for two years.

1715. 'And then, I didn't let him use the land!

1716. 'That's what we should be doing.' Was that over in New Jersey?

1717. 'I don't want to use the word "screw", but I screwed him.

1718. 'That's what we should be doing!'

1719. People in Britain and America now began to

1720. turn away from politics.

1721. The effect of the Iraq war had been very powerful.

1722. Not only did millions of people feel that they had been lied to

1723. over the weapons of mass destruction,

1724. but there was a deeper feeling - that whatever

1725. they did or said had no effect.

1726. That despite the mass protests, and the fears and the warnings -

1727. the war had happened anyway.

1728. Liberals, radicals and a whole new generation

1729. of young people retreated.

1730. They turned instead to another world that was free of this hypocrisy

1731. and the corruption of politics

1732. They went into cyberspace.

1733. By now cyberspace had become even more

1734. sophisticated and responsive to human interaction.

1735. The online world was full of algorithms

1736. that could analyse and predict human behaviour.

1737. The man behind much of this was

1738. a scientist called Judea Pearl.

1739. He was the godfather of modern Artificial Intelligence.

1740. Pearl's breakthrough had been to use what were

1741. called Bayesian Belief Networks.

1742. They were systems that could predict behaviour,

1743. even when the information was incomplete.

1744. But to make the system work, Pearl and others had imported

1745. a model of human beings drawn from economics.

1746. They created what were called rational agents,

1747. software that mimicked human beings

1748. but in a very simplified form.

1749. The model assumed that the agent would always act rationally in

1750. order to get what it wanted. Nothing more.

1751. One of the early utopians of cyberspace,

1752. Jaron Lanier, warned of the implications of this.

1753. "The agent's model of what you are

1754. "interested in will always be a cartoon.

1755. "And in return you will see a cartoon

1756. "version of the world through the agent's eyes."

1757. And, he added, "It will never be clear

1758. "who they are working for - you or someone else."

1759. New technology began to allow people to upload

1760. millions of images and videos into cyberspace.

1761. And the web - which up to that point had seemed

1762. like an abstract otherworld - began to

1763. look and feel like the real world.

1764. No, not yet.

1765. From videos of animals, personal moments of

1766. experience, extraordinary events,

1767. to horrific terror videos, more and more was uploaded.

1768. And in a strange, sad twist,

1769. the first terrorist beheading video that was

1770. posted online was that of

1771. Judea Pearl's own son, Daniel Pearl.

1772. He was a journalist for the

1773. Wall Street Journal and had been kidnapped by

1774. radical Islamists in Pakistan.

1775. They recorded what they said was his confession...

1776. .. and then his killing.

1777. My name is Daniel Pearl.

1778. I'm a Jewish-American.

1779. I come from... On my father's side of the family, are Zionists.

1780. My father is Jewish.

1781. My mother is Jewish. I'm Jewish.

1782. Only now do I think about some of the people in Guantanamo Bay

1783. must be in a similar situation.

1784. This was a new world that the old systems of power

1785. found it very difficult to deal with.

1786. In the wake of the 9/11 attacks,

1787. the security agencies secretly collected data from

1788. millions of people online.

1789. One programme was called Optic Nerve. It took stills from

1790. the webcam conversations of millions of people across the world,

1791. trying to spot terrorists planning another attack.

1792. The programme did not discover a single terrorist.

1793. But it did discover something else.

1794. A top secret assessment said...

1795. But increasingly, people were using

1796. the internet in other ways - to present themselves as

1797. THEY wanted to be seen.

1798. I guess the video blog is about me.

1799. I don't really want to tell you where I live

1800. because you could, like, stalk me.

1801. The web drew people in because it was mesmerising.

1802. It was somewhere that you could explore

1803. and get lost in in any way you wanted.

1804. But behind the screen, like in a two-way mirror,

1805. the simplified agents were watching and

1806. predicting and guiding your hand on the mouse.

1807. Stop...

1808. I nearly... threw my phone away!

1809. Stop! Stop!

1810. Pose. Pose. And snap a selfie...

1811. There you go. There you go.

1812. They play with themselves.

1813. But what they don't know...

1814. As the intelligent systems online gathered

1815. ever more data, new forms of guidance began to emerge.

1816. Social media created filters -

1817. complex algorithms that looked at what

1818. individuals liked - and then fed more of the same

1819. back to them.

1820. In the process, individuals began to

1821. move, without noticing, into bubbles that

1822. isolated them from enormous amounts of other information.

1823. They only heard and saw what they liked.

1824. And the news feeds increasingly

1825. excluded anything that might challenge people's

1826. pre-existing beliefs.

1827. The version of cyberspace that was

1828. rising up seemed to be very much like

1829. William Gibson's original vision.

1830. That behind the superficial freedoms of the web

1831. were a few giant corporations with opaque systems that controlled

1832. what people saw and shaped what they thought.

1833. And what was even more mysterious was

1834. how they made their decisions about what you should like.

1835. And what should be hidden from you.

1836. But then, the other utopian vision of cyberspace re-emerged.

1837. Taking over the roadway.

1838. Take it!

1839. After the financial crash of 2008

1840. the politicians saved the banks.

1841. But they did practically nothing about the massive corruption

1842. that was revealed in its wake.

1843. And the reason they gave was that it might

1844. destabilise the system.

1845. Public anger burst out. The Occupy movement took over Wall Street

1846. and then the Senate in Washington.

1847. The issue is that certain individuals

1848. that are very wealthy, have pretty much corrupted our political system

1849. and this is the heart of it.

1850. This is the Senate building.

1851. These people have been cut off and they've corrupted our democracy

1852. and it's literally killing people.

1853. I'm an Iraqi war vet. I went to Iraq in 2009.

1854. I've seen what happens first hand when we let corruption

1855. rule our elected government and democracy. We're coming here today

1856. just to raise awareness.

1857. What drove the Occupy movement was the

1858. original dream of the internet that people

1859. like John Perry Barlow had outlined in the early 1990s.

1860. In his Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace,

1861. Barlow had described a new world free of politics and the

1862. old hierarchies of power.

1863. A space where people connected together as equals in a network

1864. and built a new society without leaders.

1865. Now, the Occupy movement set out to

1866. build that kind of society in the real world.

1867. The camps were to be the models.

1868. All the meetings used the idea of the human microphone.

1869. People throughout the crowd repeated a

1870. speaker's words so everyone could hear them.

1871. We are now going to vote...

1872. .. on whether to stay here for the next two hours...

1873. .. on whether to stay here for the next two hours...

1874. .. or leave now.

1875. .. or leave now.

1876. But if someone wanted to challenge the speaker,

1877. the human amplifiers also had to repeat THEIR words

1878. so their voice had equal power.

1879. .. what she said...

1880. .. what she said...

1881. .. was that... was that... the proposal...

1882. Each person was an autonomous individual who expressed

1883. what they believed.

1884. But together they became components in a network that organised itself

1885. through the feedback of information around the system.

1886. You could organise people without the exercise of power.

1887. The crisis in Egypt.

1888. A march through our main streets.

1889. Looks like chaos. Looks like

1890. police is running around

1891. and a few hundred people walking down the street.

1892. Then, almost immediately, the Arab Spring began.

1893. The first revolution started in Tunisia,

1894. but it quickly spread to Egypt.

1895. On January 25th 2011, thousands of Egyptians

1896. came out in groups across Cairo and then

1897. started moving towards Tahrir Square.

1898. It seemed like a spontaneous uprising but the internet

1899. had played a key role in organising the groups.

1900. One of the main activists was

1901. an Egyptian computer engineer called Wael Ghonim.

1902. He worked for Google in Egypt

1903. but he had also set up the Facebook site that

1904. played the key role in organising the first protests.

1905. As hundreds of thousands took over Tahrir Square,

1906. Ghonim gave an interview on Egyptian TV.

1907. But Ghonim was also overwhelmed by the power

1908. this new technology had,

1909. that a computer engineer with a keyboard could call out

1910. thousands of people...

1911. some of whom then died in the midst of the protests.

1912. Many liberals in the West saw this as proof

1913. of the revolutionary power of the internet.

1914. Again it seemed to be able to organise

1915. a revolution without leaders.

1916. A revolution powerful enough to topple a brutal dictator

1917. who had been backed by America and the West for 30 years.

1918. But the internet radicals were not the

1919. only ones who saw their dreams being fulfilled

1920. in the Arab Spring.

1921. Many of the political leaders of the West also

1922. enthusiastically supported the revolutions

1923. because it seemed to fit with their simple idea of regime change.

1924. It might have failed in Iraq

1925. but now the people, everywhere, were rising up to rid

1926. themselves of the evil tyrants.

1927. And democracy would flourish.

1928. So when an uprising began in Libya,

1929. Britain, France and America supported it.

1930. And suddenly, Colonel Gaddafi stopped being

1931. a hero of the West.

1932. All the politicians, and the public relations people, and the academics

1933. who had all promoted him as a global thinker

1934. suddenly disappeared.

1935. And Gaddafi became yet again an evil dictator who had to be overthrown.

1936. His son Saif said, "The way these people are

1937. "disowning me and my father is disgusting.

1938. "Just a few months ago, we were being treated as

1939. "honoured friends.

1940. "Now that rebels are threatening our country, these cowards

1941. "are turning on us."

1942. Colonel Gaddafi retreated to the ruins of the house that

1943. the Americans had bombed 30 years before and addressed the world.

1944. Muammar Gaddafi is the glory.

1945. If I had a position, if I were a president,

1946. I would have resigned.

1947. I would have thrown my resignation in your face.

1948. But I have no position, no post.

1949. I have nowhere to resign from.

1950. I have my gun, I have my rifle to fight for Libya.

1951. Withdraw your children from the streets.

1952. Take your children back.

1953. They are drugging your children.

1954. They are making your children drunk

1955. and they are sending them to hell.

1956. Your children will die. What for?

1957. In November 2011 a large convoy was spotted driving at high speed

1958. away from Colonel Gaddafi's home town of Sirte.

1959. An American drone,

1960. controlled from a shed outside Las Vegas,

1961. was sent to follow it.

1962. The operator fired a missile at the lead car of the convoy.

1963. Gaddafi then fled - looking for shelter from

1964. the oncoming rebel forces.

1965. He hid under the road in a drainage pipe.

1966. But instead of becoming a democracy,

1967. Libya began to descend into chaos.

1968. And the other revolutions were also failing.

1969. The Occupy camps had become trapped in endless meetings.

1970. And it became clear that there

1971. was a terrible confusion at the heart of the movement.

1972. The radicals had believed that if

1973. they could create a new way of organising people

1974. then a new society would emerge.

1975. But what they did not have was a picture of what that

1976. society would be like, a vision of the future.

1977. The truth was that their revolution was not about an idea.

1978. It was about how you manage things.

1979. And those who had started the revolution

1980. in Egypt came face-to-face with the same terrible fact.

1981. Social media had helped

1982. to bring people together in Tahrir square.

1983. But once there, the internet gave no clue as

1984. to what kind of new society they could create in Egypt.

1985. The movement stalled.

1986. And a group that DID have a powerful idea - the

1987. Muslim Brotherhood - rushed in to fill the vacuum.

1988. The Brotherhood took power in an election

1989. and one of them, Mohamed Morsi, became President.

1990. The liberals and the Left were shocked.

1991. And, bit by bit, they turned back to

1992. the military, protesting, asking them to save

1993. the revolution from being captured by Islamists.

1994. In the spring of 2013, the military took action.

1995. They arrested the President and

1996. killed hundreds of his supporters who protested.

1997. And an extraordinary spectacle unfolded in Tahrir Square.

1998. Thousands of the liberal activists who

1999. had begun the revolution two years before,

2000. summoned by social media, now welcomed the

2001. military back by waving their laser pens at the

2002. helicopters flying overhead.

2003. The crowd had been summoned there once again by Facebook.

2004. After the failure of the revolutions, it was not

2005. just the radicals - no-one in the West had

2006. any idea of how to change the world.

2007. At home, the politicians had given so much of their

2008. power away, to finance and the ever-growing

2009. managerial bureaucracies, that they in effect

2010. had become managers themselves.

2011. While abroad, all their adventures had failed.

2012. And their simplistic vision of the world had been exposed

2013. as dangerous and destructive.

2014. But in Russia, there was a group of men who

2015. had seen how this very lack of belief in

2016. politics, and dark uncertainty about the

2017. future could work to their advantage.

2018. What they had done was turn politics into a strange

2019. theatre where nobody knew what was true or

2020. what was fake any longer.

2021. They were called political technologists and they were

2022. the key figures behind President Putin.

2023. They had kept him in power, unchallenged, for 15 years.

2024. Some of them had been dissidents back in the 1970s

2025. and had been powerfully influenced by the

2026. science fiction writings of the Strugatsky brothers.

2027. 20 years later, when Russia fell

2028. apart after the end of communism, they rose up

2029. and took control of the media.

2030. And they used it to manipulate the electorate on a vast scale.

2031. For them, reality was just something that

2032. could be manipulated and shaped into anything

2033. you wanted it to be.

2034. But then a technologist emerged who went much further.

2035. And his ideas would become central to

2036. Putin's grip on power.

2037. He was called Vladislav Surkov.

2038. Surkov came originally from the theatre world and those who have

2039. studied his career say that what he did was take

2040. avant-garde ideas from the theatre and bring

2041. them into the heart of politics.

2042. Surkov's aim was not just to manipulate people

2043. but to go deeper and play with, and undermine

2044. their very perception of the world so they are

2045. never sure what is really happening.

2046. Surkov turned Russian politics into

2047. a bewildering, constantly changing piece of theatre.

2048. He used Kremlin money to sponsor

2049. all kinds of groups - from mass anti-fascist youth organisations,

2050. to the very opposite - neo-Nazi skinheads.

2051. And liberal human rights groups who

2052. then attacked the government.

2053. Surkov even backed whole political parties that were

2054. opposed to President Putin.

2055. But the key thing was that Surkov then let it be known that this

2056. was what he was doing.

2057. Which meant that no-one was sure what was real or what was fake

2058. in modern Russia.

2059. As one journalist put it,

2060. "It's a strategy of power that keeps any opposition

2061. "constantly confused -

2062. "a ceaseless shape-shifting that is unstoppable

2063. "because it is indefinable."

2064. Meanwhile, real power was elsewhere -

2065. hidden away behind the stage,

2066. exercised without anyone seeing it.

2067. And then the same thing seemed to start happening in the West.

2068. By now it was becoming ever more clear

2069. that the system had deep flaws.

2070. Every month there were new revelations,

2071. of most of the banks' involvement in global corruption,

2072. of massive tax avoidance by all the major corporations,

2073. of the secret surveillance of everyone's e-mails

2074. by the National Security Agency.

2075. Yet no-one was prosecuted,

2076. except for a few people at the lowest levels.

2077. And behind it all,

2078. the massive inequality kept on growing.

2079. Yet the structure of power remained the same.

2080. Nothing ever changed -

2081. because nothing could be allowed to destabilise the system.

2082. But then the shape-shifting began.

2083. Thank you very much. So nice.

2084. So amazing. So amazing.

2085. We love you. What? That's OK.

2086. I love you more, OK?

2087. The campaign that Donald Trump ran

2088. was unlike anything before in politics.

2089. Nothing was fixed.

2090. What he said, who he attacked

2091. and how he attacked them was constantly changing and shifting.

2092. Trump attacked his Republican rivals

2093. as all being part of a broken and corrupt system -

2094. a politics where everyone could be bought,

2095. using words that could have come from the Occupy movement.

2096. You've also donated to several Democratic candidates,

2097. Hillary Clinton included, Nancy Pelosi.

2098. You explained away those donations saying you did that

2099. to get business-related favours.

2100. And you said recently, "When you give,

2101. "they do whatever the hell you want them to do."

2102. You'd better believe it. So what specifically did they do?

2103. If I ask them, if I need them...

2104. You know, most of the people on this stage,

2105. I've given to, just so you understand, a lot of money.

2106. I will tell you that our system is broken.

2107. I give to many people.

2108. Before this, before two months ago, I was a businessman.

2109. I give to everybody. When they call, I give.

2110. And you know what, when I need something from them,

2111. two years later, three years later, I call them.

2112. They are there for me. So what did you get? And that's a broken system.

2113. But at the same time, Trump used the language

2114. of the extreme racist right in America,

2115. connecting with people's darkest fears -

2116. pushing them and bringing those fears out into the open.

2117. Get the fuck out of here!

2118. Our country, motherfucker!

2119. Our country!

2120. Proud fucking American!

2121. Made in the USA, bitch!

2122. Made in the fucking USA!

2123. Don't fucking come back, burrito bitch!

2124. Go fucking right back to jail, motherfucker!

2125. Build that fucking wall for me!

2126. Trump! Donald Trump!

2127. Fuck you! I love my country!

2128. Yeah! I'll fuck like at least ten of you up in one session,

2129. you fucking pussy!

2130. Many of the facts that Trump asserted

2131. were also completely untrue.

2132. But Trump didn't care.

2133. He and his audience knew that much of what he said

2134. bore little relationship to reality.

2135. This meant that Trump defeated journalism -

2136. because the journalists' central belief was that

2137. their job was to expose lies and assert the truth.

2138. With Trump, this became irrelevant.

2139. Not surprisingly, Vladimir Putin admired this.

2140. The liberals were outraged by Trump.

2141. But they expressed their anger in cyberspace,

2142. so it had no effect -

2143. because the algorithms made sure that they only spoke to people

2144. who already agreed with them.

2145. Instead, ironically, their waves of angry messages and tweets

2146. benefitted the large corporations who ran the social media platforms.

2147. One online analyst put it simply, "Angry people click more."

2148. It meant that the radical fury

2149. that came like waves across the internet

2150. no longer had the power to change the world.

2151. Instead, it was becoming a fuel

2152. that was feeding the new systems of power

2153. and making them ever more powerful.

2154. But none of the liberals could possibly imagine

2155. that Donald Trump could ever win the nomination.

2156. It was just a giant pantomime.

2157. Then of course there's Donald Trump.

2158. Donald Trump has been saying that he will run for president

2159. as a Republican, which is surprising,

2160. since I just assumed he was running as a joke.

2161. Donald Trump often appears on Fox, which is ironic,

2162. because a fox often appears on Donald Trump's head.

2163. Donald Trump owns the Miss USA Pageant,

2164. which is great for Republicans

2165. because it will streamline their search for a vice president.

2166. Donald Trump said recently he has a great relationship with the blacks.

2167. though unless the Blacks are a family of white people,

2168. I bet he's mistaken.

2169. But underneath the liberal disdain,

2170. both Donald Trump in America, and Vladislav Surkov in Russia

2171. had realised the same thing -

2172. that the version of reality that politics presented

2173. was no longer believable,

2174. that the stories politicians told their people about the world

2175. had stopped making sense.

2176. And in the face of that, you could play with reality,

2177. constantly shifting and changing,

2178. and in the process, further undermine and weaken

2179. the old forms of power.

2180. And there was another force that was about to dramatically reveal

2181. just how weak politics had become in the West -

2182. Syria.

2183. The attack happened here at a central police station

2184. in Damascus.

2185. Police say the bomber came up the stairs,

2186. police then opened fire,

2187. and then police say he detonated the explosives.

2188. And the damage is here to see.

2189. Behind me, the pockmarked walls where the ball bearings hit.

2190. Blood splattered on the walls.

2191. And the force of the blast caused walls to collapse.

2192. And everything is topsy-turvy, everything destroyed.

2193. By now Syria was being torn apart by a horrific civil war.

2194. What had started as part of the Arab Spring

2195. had turned into a vicious battle to the death

2196. between Bashar Assad and his opponents.

2197. And at the heart of the conflict

2198. was the force that his father had first brought to the West -

2199. suicide bombing.

2200. Back in the 1980s

2201. Bashar Assad's father had seen suicide bombing

2202. as a weapon he could use

2203. to force the Americans out of the Middle East.

2204. But over the next 30 years it had shifted and mutated

2205. into something that had now ended up doing the very opposite -

2206. tearing the Arab world apart.

2207. Hafez al-Assad's dream of a powerful and united Arab world

2208. was now destroyed.

2209. In Iraq, extremist Sunni groups had used suicide bombing

2210. as a way to start a sectarian war.

2211. And now groups like Isis brought the same techniques into Syria

2212. to attack not just Assad's son but his fellow Shi'ites.

2213. And like his father, Bashar Assad retaliated

2214. with a vengeful fury.

2215. And the country fell apart.

2216. Allahu Akbar.

2217. Allahu Akbar. Allahu Akbar.

2218. My fellow Americans...

2219. tonight I want to talk to you about Syria -

2220. why it matters and where we go from here.

2221. Faced by the war, western politicians were bewildered.

2222. They insisted Bashar Assad was evil.

2223. But then it turned out that his enemies were more evil

2224. and more horrific than him.

2225. The question before the House today

2226. is how we keep the British people safe from the threat

2227. posed by Isil.

2228. This is not about whether we want to fight terrorism,

2229. it's about how best we do that.

2230. So Britain, America and France

2231. decided to bomb the terrorist threat.

2232. But the effect of that was to help keep Assad in power.

2233. Then it became more confusing.

2234. Suddenly, the Russians intervened.

2235. President Putin sent hundreds of planes and combat troops

2236. to support Assad.

2237. But no-one knew what their underlying aim was.

2238. They seemed to be using a strategy that

2239. Vladislav Surkov had developed in the Ukraine.

2240. He called it non-linear warfare.

2241. It was a new kind of war - where you never know

2242. what the enemy are really up to.

2243. Allahu Akbar.

2244. The underlying aim, Surkov said, was not to win the war,

2245. but to use the conflict to create a constant state

2246. of destabilised perception -

2247. in order to manage and control.

2248. Allahu Akbar.

2249. In March 2016 the Russians suddenly announced with a great fanfare

2250. that they were leaving Syria.

2251. And a concert was held in the ruins of Palmyra

2252. to celebrate the withdrawal.

2253. But in reality, the Russians never left.

2254. They are still there,

2255. and still no-one knows what they want.

2256. And within Syria there was a new Islamist ideologist

2257. who was determined to exploit the growing uncertainties

2258. in Europe and America.

2259. He was called Abu Musab al-Suri -

2260. the Syrian.

2261. Al-Suri had originally worked with Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan,

2262. but he had turned against him.

2263. Al-Suri gave lectures that had a powerful effect

2264. on the Islamist movement.

2265. He argued that bin Laden had been wrong

2266. to attack the West head on,

2267. because it created a massive military response

2268. that had almost destroyed Islamism.

2269. Instead, al-Suri said,

2270. independent groups or individuals

2271. should stage random, small-scale attacks

2272. on civilians in Europe and America.

2273. The aim was to spread fear,

2274. uncertainty and doubt -

2275. and undermine the already failing authority of western politicians.

2276. The effect of the attacks shocked Europe and America

2277. and gave powerful force to the new politics of uncertainty and anxiety.

2278. I'm sure that you, with me,

2279. share the absolute horror and total revulsion

2280. at what happened in Paris last Friday.

2281. And I'm afraid there is,

2282. and we have to be honest and frank about this

2283. and talk about these things without being fearful,

2284. there is a problem with some of the Muslim community in this country.

2285. There is a problem. And we have to be honest about it.

2286. Our politicians, I'm afraid, haven't had the guts.

2287. This could be the great Trojan horse of all time,

2288. because you look at the migration... Study it, look at it.

2289. Now they'll start infiltrating with women and children.

2290. Both the Brexit campaign in Britain

2291. and Donald Trump in America

2292. did exactly what al-Suri had predicted.

2293. They used the fear to dramatise a world where everything -

2294. even going to a restaurant - had become a risky event.

2295. And what had been seen as doomed campaigns on the fringes of society

2296. that could never win became frighteningly real.

2297. I am genuinely freaked out right now about this whole Brexit thing.

2298. Because we'd all been told that it wasn't going to happen,

2299. like it was going away, it was going away from Brexiting

2300. and on to the staying.

2301. And because I had this, like bedrock belief...

2302. I have friends who, like, live and work in London,

2303. and they said, "Don't worry, we're a very sensible people."

2304. "This isn't going to happen. It's a lot of talk,

2305. "but we don't do that sort of stuff here."

2306. Um... they were wrong.

2307. And that really kind of crushes my view of,

2308. like, what can happen that is bad

2309. that we don't think is going to happen.

2310. Like it's just not supposed to happen.

2311. I fear that we are watching

2312. the stirrings of fascism in Europe again.

2313. And I genuinely never thought it would be my country

2314. that did that.

2315. I thought this would be America.

2316. I thought America was the people who were so filled with hate.

2317. Not us.

2318. And I'm so disappointed.

2319. I'm so hurt.

2320. Zee.

2321. Standing Room Only by Barbara Mandrell.

2322. This is my right to free speech going on here, OK?

2323. Oh.

2324. You're on video. Oh.

2325. Say bye, Heather.